Baghdad Journal

Death of Saddam's Sons and Iraqi Exiles in Amman

Mohamed tells me Iraq is much better off without Saddam's sons.

At the Ofrich Cafe in downtown Amman four to five men sit around card tables playing poker. They are exiled Iraqis, Chaldeans and Jordanians, some of which sit outside on the balcony and drink hot tea with mint and smoke tobacco from long free-standing pipes called nargile. Brandon and I walk with Shak Hannish [see prior entry] through the open doors of the balcony and sit and order hot tea and a cold, bottled Pepsi. The cars move along the busy streets below. The men smoke. Every now and then a man with a shallow pail and tongs comes from the kitchen with burning chunks of tobacco and sets it gently on the screen on top of the pipes. The man sitting next to me has a fresh one and inhales and looks out over the street, seemingly at nothing.

Al Jeezera is on the TV hanging in the corner of the room. There are images of Bush giving a statement about the deaths of Uday and Qusay. He says the Saddam regime is no longer a threat, that it was a great day for the Iraqi people. Some of the men playing cards look up for a second, but then nod their attention back into their hands. I ask some of these men if I can photograph them, but they wave me away. Some men in a table in the corner near the balcony agree, but they're impatient with me. "You finished?" a man asks in English, holding his cards close to his face, his hair slicked back, streaked with silver, his face whiter than mine. Feeling defensive, I only snapped a few shots. No time to get over my own feeling and see anything other than Men Playing Cards. I'm not very interested in the shot. I'm seeing something else--their connection to one another, a depth in their dark eyes--but there's no time. I thank them, and walk away with only a soft-focused photograph of a man holding his cards, looking at me through the lens with some hard (possibly bitter) feeling.

It is early evening, and the light is going. The sky saturated with a deep blue and darkening. On the balcony there is a cool breeze. Brandon sits between Shak and another Iraqi, a Shiite who had been a captain in Saddam's army. He tells Brandon he knows where the weapons of mass destruction are, even though he left the country nine years ago.

There is a large Jordanian leaning on the rail, hovering, eaves-dropping. His name is Mohamed and he asks me who I work for. He looks tired, but alert, perhaps too much tobacco. "You here to cover the things happening in Iraq?" he asks. Mohamed says he studied in Egypt for a while. He spits as he talks. I ask him what Jordanians think of the death of Saddam's sons. "You mean Uday and Qusay? I cannot speak for all Jordanians," he says, bringing his fat hand to his big chest. "I can only speak for myself. It is a good thing, yes. They committed many crimes. They were bad people. They are no good for Iraq."

(Just an hour before we entered the cafe, Shak told me about a conversation he had with a Jordanian cabdriver who still favored Saddam, a view, he said, that represents lots of Jordanians. When we leave the cafe, another cab driver asks Shak if he thinks Uday and Qusay are really dead. Yes, he tells him. How do they know? the driver asks. Because they have scientific evidence and they were able to identify their faces, he tells him. They have photographs. The cab driver said he wouldn't believe they were dead until he saw pictures.)

Mohamed asks me my name. "An Arabic name. Are you an Arab?" he asks. I tell him it is a common Christian name. He asks me my religion. I lie and tell him I'm Catholic. Oh, he says, but looks confused. "Bush," he says, when the clip comes up on Al Jeezera again. He asks me if I go to the movies, if I like football (soccer). "I like Sylvester Stallone," he says. "Do you like Indian movies?" he asks. "Do you get Indian movies in America?" He is full of questions. "How come Americans don't like football? Every body in the world likes football, except the Americans."

When we leave the Ofrich cafe, we take a taxi up the hill to a theatre staging a popular play called Us, Shock and Saddam. The play is a satire about the relationship of the Arab world--the politicians and the common people--to Saddam, to the U.S. attack on Iraq and the reactions among their political leaders. The play was set in cafes in various Middle Eastern countries. The men on one side of the room represeting the people who easily digest the propaganda being transmitted to them, the other side representing a more critical view.

One actor appears in a box--the television prop--in the back of the stage, the commentator for Al Jeezera bringing the latest news. The main actor for the play is a boisterous turtled-faced man who plays retired U.S. General Jay Garner, Yassar Arafat, Hosni Mabarek and Saddam Hussein perfectly. No government or interest was spared criticism in this play. One scene that brought much laughter, but was difficult to watch, depicted an ignorant Iraqi interogater with three captured American soldiers who didn't understand his English. The Iraqi carried a fake gun. He hit the American soldiers on the back of the head and the players acted terrified. "I don't know, I don't understand," one said. "Next time, before they send you back here, your army should train you to speak English," the Iraqi interogator said. The audience roared at the punch-line.

Our first day here was more full than I could've imagined, despite feeling tired and jet-lagged. We talked a number of Iraqi exiles about the latest news, what they hoped for their country. In just a day, from the the poker cafe to the theater to an Iraqi restuarant in a smoky alleyway at midnight, I've heard many different viewpoints, many opinions, many stories about who people are, and how they've been affected watching their country destroyed, by Saddam, by all the war. Some want to forget and start over, some don't have a place to return to and want to immigrate to America where there's opportunity. But so many Iraqis--like the Babylonian who spoke so passionately with his friends hanging off his shoulders supporting him outside the Iraqi restuarant where we ate a plate full of charred chicken and grilled vegetables close to midnight as kittens meowed around our feet--just want to return home.

Tomorrow we head for Aqaba on the coast.

Posted by Adam Shemper at July 24, 2003 06:59 PM | TrackBack